Panel Passes Welfare Plan That Includes Job Training

A major welfare revision program that would require more recipients to take job training was approved Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee, as congressional efforts continued toward enacting the first significant change in the welfare system in 20 years.

The $5.2-billion plan, which passed 23 to 13, would substantially boost spending for job education and training and would offer participants help with child care and transportation expenses. The measure would require job training for single parents with children over age 3. The current law exempts single parents with children under age 6.

The bill “will allow welfare recipients to break out of the depressing cycle of poverty by making available the education and skills these people need to get and keep jobs,” said Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.), acting chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on public assistance.

Other Welfare Bills

Supporters hope that the measure will reach the House floor for a vote later this year after it is reviewed by several other House committees. A welfare bill also is expected to be introduced in the Senate and the Reagan Administration is proposing its own version, although narrower in scope and less costly.

Congressional leaders said that with the House and Senate now controlled by Democrats, chances are greater that a plan with major changes will be enacted.

The plan approved Wednesday was sharply criticized by committee Republicans, who charged that it is too expensive and that it improperly allows job trainees to reject jobs that pay less than their welfare benefits.

“The bill imprisons people on welfare and it is a disgrace to this Congress,” said Rep. Hank Brown (R-Colo.) after the vote.

The Ways and Means bill would give states increased powers to collect child support payments from absent parents, with the goal of making many single-parent families less dependent on government aid. States would be empowered to require automatic withholding of child support payments from a parent’s paycheck after a court order for support is issued.

Two-Parent Families

Benefits would also be made available for the first time to all two-parent families in which neither parent is employed. Current law limits payments to one-parent families and two-parent households in which the breadwinner is disabled.

Republican-backed amendments to reduce the benefits and restrict those eligible for them were defeated.

Democrats are hoping to make the bill a political challenge to President Reagan, who has called for welfare reform.

“This legislation matches the pro-work and pro-family rhetoric of the President with action,” Rep. Dan Rostenkowksi (D-Ill.) said after committee passage of the bill. “If he believes what he has been saying, he will wholeheartedly support this bill.”